The study, published in Springer’s journal Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, showed teens who spent more time multi-tasking with their electrical devices fared significantly worse academically than others.

These teenagers also scored lower in certain aspects of their memory, tended to be more impulsive and were more likely to believe that intelligence is not malleable.

The results extended previous findings from adults and suggest the relationships between ability and media multi-tasking are already established by mid-teens.

Professor Amy Finn, from the University of Toronto, said: “We found a link between greater media multi-tasking and worse academic outcomes in adolescents.

“This relationship may be due to decreased executive functions and increased impulsiveness - both previously associated with both greater media multitasking and worse academic outcomes.”

She added: “The direction of causality is difficult to establish. For example, media multi-tasking may be a consequence of underlying cognitive differences and not vice versa.”

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